


I don’t give a shit about Captain America, I’m here for Steve Rogers.

by Illyah



Series: Apparently Elle's Writing Stucky Now [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aliens, Avengers Retelling, Battle of New York (Marvel), Best Friends, Hydra, Love, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, SHIELD, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 08:12:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14996588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Illyah/pseuds/Illyah
Summary: The Winter Soldier surfaces for the first time in five years between the time the Captain America is discovered and the aliens invade New York. That would be surprising enough on its own, but to make matters even stranger, all of a sudden he’s allowing himself to be caught on camera. Always in full tac gear, displaying his gleaming metal arm.Or, The Winter Soldier breaks free on his own five years before Steve gets found. Then he follows Steve around the city like a puppy. For PROTECTION.





	I don’t give a shit about Captain America, I’m here for Steve Rogers.

The Winter Soldier surfaces for the first time in five years between the time the Captain America is discovered and the aliens invade New York. That would be surprising enough on its own, but to make matters even stranger, all of a sudden he’s allowing himself to be caught on camera. Always in full tac gear, displaying his gleaming metal arm.

Fury is immediately suspicious. He opens the sparse folder that contains everything SHIELD has been able to discover about the Soldier.

 **File Name:** WS-09

 **Operative Codename:**  Winter Soldier

 **Given Name:** Unknown

 **Known Affiliations:** HYDRA, Red Room, KGB

 **Age:** Unknown

 **Years Active:** 1956-2006

 **Location:** Unknown

 **Skills Set:** Sniper, world class, Assassin, world class, close quarter combat, world class.

Fury would do what he did best in situations where he didn’t have enough information, he would wait it out, it was all about the long game, so he’d wait for the Soldier to make his move. But he couldn’t shake the feeling it had something to do with Captain America. He’d absolutely be corrected three weeks later, when he was staring down a sneering Winter Soldier, “I don’t give a shit about _Captain America_ , I’m here for Steve Rogers.”

Bucky’d spent the last few years fighting off the last of HYDRAs control and molding himself into a somewhat functional human being. The first couple of years were spent running, when he finally managed to break free of the control he’d been under, he spent equal time avoiding HDYRA and seeking them out to dismantle from the inside.

He’d spent the next three years slowly separating reality from fiction, and finally felt as though he had a handle on his mind. Until one morning in 2011. He awake early as he did every other morning, the sun barely rising over his tiny apartment in Bucharest, and turned on his phone to check out the news. He dropped his coffee when he read the headline about Captain America being found alive and his body being in-route to New York.

Before he knew exactly what he was doing he found himself heading back to New York, planning on observing from afar and basing himself out of his home in Brooklyn. He’d bought the building he and Steve used to live in from Peggy a few years back, through a series of shell companies, and when he was stateside, he used that as his home base.

Bucky spent a lot of time on rooftops in the initial weeks after Steve’s return. He had memorized Steve’s schedule and followed him from above on his morning runs, easily falling back into the pattern they had followed when they were kids and Bucky was the only thing standing between Steve and the world.

He watched the way Steve interacted with the new members of his team and was particularly interested in the way that he responded to Natalia and Clint, as if gaging his reaction to their histories, even while knowing it would be a totally different situation when it came to him.

He took great pride in the fact that not even the stalwart Natalia ever detected his presence.  He watched as Steve tried desperately to integrate into this new world he was a stranger in. At least in Bucky’s case he’d had brief periods of lucidity among the madness and he had been kept up to date with technological changes and given the ability and knowledge to fit in where he needed to be. Steve, however, was completely thrown into a world nothing like he’d left behind.

Bucky wasn’t planning to interfere, even when he noticed that Steve was struggling-he thought maybe at the very most he’d speak to Natalia and see what she thought, but even that was a long way away. He watched as Steve tried to adjust and learn things like how to use a cell phone and what the internet was. He listened while Natalia told Steve that men could get married now and felt his eyes tear up right along with Steve thinking of their past and how much they would have loved that.

He wondered if Steve still loved him, and he wondered if he ever actually stopped loving Steve. The part of him that was and always would be the Soldier didn’t seem to have anything to say.

He decides to let Natalia pick up his trail a week before everything goes to Hell in New York. He’s surprised she doesn’t immediately go to her team, but the part of him that’s the same as her knows that he wouldn’t have brought someone he considered a threat straight to the team either. She tries to reverse tail him, but he’s too good for that, and he’s been at this a hell of a lot longer than her.

He hears about Germany shortly before the newly formed Avengers are set to depart, and over hears their debrief about all potential players on the field and is surprised when his name is mentioned.

“There’s another potential player on the board. Rumor has it he’s been spotted stateside for the first time in half a decade. He’s a ghost, and ex-Soviet assassin Codename Winter Soldier. We don’t know much about him, except that he’s been active since the late fifties and manages to not look a day over twenty-eight. He’s responsible for over two hundred assassinations in over fifty years, before completely dropping off the radar, and dismantling HYDRA from the inside. We don’t know if he’s a friendly.” Fury told the team. “If you see him, it’s because he _allows_ you to. And if you see him, you’ll know. He’s distinctive.”

Nat add her two cents quickly before the team splits, “He makes me and Clint look like amateur detectives.” She grudgingly admits.

He follows the team to Germany and watches from afar once again. Bucky found himself glad that he hadn’t had to intervene yet and deal with the inevitable fall out that would come from revealing himself. They successfully apprehend Loki in Germany, and he knows it’s too easy. He’s played that game, Loki is exactly where he wants to be, and more frighteningly, he looks absolutely delighted when Thor (since when are there _gods_ )? Shows up and get involved in the whole fiasco.

Then Loki escapes and they lose Clint and everything is an unholy mess. Disfigured hideous aliens are pouring through a hole in the sky while Loki, eyes glowing tesseract blue rides some kind of metal stingray through the streets of lower Manhattan.

Later, he won’t know exactly what caused him to get involved, but one moment he was watching from a top Grand Central Station and the next minute he was jumping on the back of some giant metal fish and punching holes in it with his metal hand as he went scaling up to the front before punching it straight between the eyes and ripping out the wires acting as it’s central nervous system.

He finds himself flipping off the quickly descending craft and digs his left hand into the pavement, cutting through it like butter and eventually bringing him to the stop directly in front of Captain America himself.

He vaguely hears Steve announce over his comms that he’s “pretty sure the Winter Soldier just showed up.” Several things happen all at once, Steve throws his shield, and it embeds in the side of a car, Bucky retrieves said shield, just in time to throw it as hard as his bionic arm can, at the hovering figure above them, knocking Loki unconscious briefly, and allowing the rest of the Avengers to disrupt the frequency coming from the mothership and close the portal.

Eventually the rest of the team gathers around and Loki starts to stir, eyes a perfect shade of viridian green. “What, What happened? Thor? Why am I on Midgard?” And Bucky though that he looked incredibly small at the moment. Thankfully it had been discovered that Loki had been under the same kind of mind control as Clint and Thor hadn’t completely lost his “brother” to madness. After being around them for all of two minutes Bucky was sure something was off there.

He slowly backed away from the team as they all surrounded Steve and made plans to go out to eat. He smiled to himself, happy for Steve, and grateful that he had found friends, people who liked him, but he still worried that they didn’t quite see Steve under the Captain.

He should have gone home, if he’d gone home, he would have stuck to his plan, he wouldn’t have gotten involved, and Steve would have been able to go on thinking Bucky was dead and not have to worry about the fact that his not-dead boyfriend was a serial killer.

But them he heard Steve talking to his friends over some weird mishmash of meat “It’s just strange, you know, to be in a world where no one remembers who you really are.” And Steve looked so old, in that moment, he looked every one of his nearly one hundred years, and Bucky was glad that he’d decided to change his clothes and wash the black off his eyes.

He couldn’t remember the last time anyone other than Peggy had actually seen his face, and Natalia’s jaw dropped when he finally came out of the shadows.

“Hi, Stevie.”

 


End file.
